Clock Hands
by AshenMoon42
Summary: Mrs Weasley liked to think she could speak to Death sometimes. / / post-war angst with a happy(ish) ending / / drabble


**Written for the Writing School challenge in the IWSC Round 2. **

**Beauxbatons**

**Dialogue tags/action beats**

**The Tale of the Three Brothers — [character] death**

**Year 7**

**Wordcount: 834**

**.**

**CLOCK HANDS**

Molly arrived home after the battle on legs made of rubber. The room seemed hollow as the last of her children traipsed in behind her, and her husband laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. She barely felt his touch. As she sat at the table, she looked at the clock out of instinct, and her heart almost stopped.

Fred's face grinned at her from the head of the golden hand as it spun and spun and spun around the clock face, stopping only at 'MORTAL PERIL', 'LOST', and 'TRAVELLING'.

Molly stared in shock, her family turning to her in confusion as she stood from her chair, the legs scraping harshly against the ground and gnawing at the silence. Then, taking a deep breath in, she began to scream. She poured everything into it: pain, anger, grief. In its note, it held her suffering, and the sound of it bathed the house in the sorrowful noise.

When her breath ran short, she strode forward with a power she had not felt since before the war started, and tore the hand off the clock, holding the little picture of him in her fist. She felt the urge to smash it against a wall, or throw it through the window, or attach it back to her clock and let it pretend he was still here.

"Mum," came a voice from behind her.

Her arms shook. Her fist was slowly clenching around his freckled cheeks and blinding smile. "What?" she snapped, her voice wound tight as a coiled snake.

Ginny stepped forward and placed her cold hand over Molly's. "Give him to me, Mum," she whispered. "Give him to me before you do something you regret."

The kitchen was silent. All she knew was the cold hand on her loosening fist and a scream crawling back down her throat and his grinning face in her shaking hand.

.

Mrs Weasley liked to think she could speak to Death sometimes. It seemed, after he took Fred, he had become a constant companion, hovering at the edges of her mind at every waking hour. When she stood on the balcony, alone, staring at the bushes the twins used to play in, she would often look into a particularly dark place on the wall and say, "Why him?"

When she was in the darkest of moods, a shape of a man would form and as his dark eyes met hers she always looked away. "I'm not even going to look at you. You… you have ruined me."

The shape, a shadow in the corner of her eye, would step forwards, eyebrow quirked. "I will ruin everyone, in the end."

Molly turned and walked back inside, but the shadow lingered, and for days at a time after these encounters, the blinds would stay firmly closed so that she would not have to look upon that ghastly figure again.

.

Molly could barely sit in the kitchen; the clock was so empty without his face.

.

It reached the point that she struggled to look at George any more, with their identical smiles. When she talked to him, she found herself speaking to his ear, because that was the one thing Fred had had that he didn't.

"Mum," George said once. "Mum, why can't you look at me?"

Molly took a deep breath before meeting his eyes. She flinched at the hurt splayed across his features. "Nothing, Fr—"

She broke off, and George looked as broken as she did. That was the moment Molly began to cry.

.

The clock hand she kept, thrown to the back of her wardrobe until the time came that she could face it. At that point, two years after the war, she wasn't sure the time would ever come.

"Death," she whispered. "Bring him back."

He sat on the bed now. Every so often he wandered inside, and the look on his half-formed face was one to melt any mother's heart. She let him in, and they sat together, speaking of life and death and the past and the future.

"I can't." His voice was a faint hiss, one that could be mistaken for the breath of the wind.

"Why not?"

He sighed, and the entire world seemed to rattle. "He is dead, Molly. He is dead, and I do not exist."

At this moment, she let out her own sigh. "Don't say that," she said. "Please don't say that. I'll miss you if you leave now. If you do not exist any more."

.

When Angelina gave birth, Molly was the first to hear of it. The Healer left the ward to find her standing outside expectantly.

"And?"

The Healer recognised her from all her time spent in the maternity ward and smiled. "Hello, Molly. It's a boy, and he is beautiful."

Her face lit up. "What have they named him?"

The Healer smiled knowingly. "Fred."

Molly's mouth spread so wide it hurt.

From behind her, Death smiled, then rubbed his face with his hand, and left.

.

The next day, another hand was attached to the clock, and it hung at 'HOSPITAL' until the baby left it. From then on, the house didn't feel quite so empty any more.


End file.
